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Articles, Opinions, and News

As a new feature, we will bring you articles, opinions, and news dealing with many aspects of anger, anger management, and business issues related to the practice, development, and management of anger management organizations. If you have something to share on any of the above topics, please submit your article to George Anderson. We will run articles we believe are helpful and suitable for this site.

The American Association of Anger Management Providers is not committed to any one model of anger management intervention. We strongly believe that the current state of our knowledge is limited and, therefore, we encourage our providers to expose their models to evidence based research when feasible.

If you would like to publish or redistribute any article, please contact George Anderson. All articles need their author's permission for reproduction.

Communication by Example

Setting a good example for your children is the most powerful way to teach them positive behaviors and attitudes. Parents who behave in a negative manner (fight constantly, abuse alcohol and/or drugs, are disrespectful, are unmotivated, etc.) teach their children to behave in these ways. Parents who communicate with “do as I say, not as I do” confuse their children and damage their own credibility as parents. Hence, it is important that parents keep their actions and words consistent.

Someone is Watching

One of the most powerful ways children learn is by watching their parents’ actions. Today, it is widely recognized that children, who are abused or grow up in homes where parents or family members abuse alcohol and use drugs, will likely face emotional roadblocks as they enter adulthood. Such children experience an extremely negative example of family life.

What Kind of Messages are You Sending?

Children can also be damaged by behavior that does not seem to be harmful. For instance, parents with low motivation, or who deny responsibility for their mistakes, may convey the message to their children that hard work, determination, and personal responsibility are not important. Like their parents, such children are likely to do poorly in school and may later have difficulty finding or keeping a career. When they do find a job, it may be in an occupation that is considerably less challenging and likely to be low in income levels.

Home Environment Counts

Through lack of interest and attention, parents tell their child that he or she is not important, has little value, and may not be worthy of love. Children growing up in such a family are likely to have low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy. Such an environment sets the stage for difficulties and failures in school and other areas of life.

George Anderson, MSW, BCD, CAMF, CEAP
Diplomate, American Association of Anger Management Providers
Anderson & Anderson®, The Trusted Name in Anger Management
http://www.andersonservices.com/
http://www.aaamp.org
http://www.linkedin.com/in/geoanderson
www.anger-management-resources.org

Anger is an Energizer

Anger is a natural emotional state and is designed to help us stay alive. Anger sends signals to all parts of our body to help us fight. It energizes us and prepares us for action. Often, the perceived need to protect one-self comes from what amounts to psychological attacks from others.

Use Anger Wisely

When we feel energized by anger, it is smart for us to ask ourselves how we put his energy to its most productive use. As with the use of other forms of energy such as electricity, we want to use it efficiently, not wastefully.

Anger is Secondary

One of the most helpful things to remember about anger is that it is a secondary emotion. A primary feeling is what is felt immediately before we feel angry. We always feel something else first, even if we don’t notice it. We might feel afraid, attacked, offended, disrespected, forced, trapped, interrogated, or pressured. If any of these feelings are intense enough, they can lead to anger before we realize what we really felt!

Identify the Primary Emotion

An important point to remember about secondary feelings such as anger is that they do not identify the unmet emotional need. When all you can say is “I feel angry,” neither you nor any one else knows what would help you feel better. An amazingly simple, but effective, technique is to always identify the primary emotion.

Situations that Cause Anger Can Be Avoided

Here is an example. Assume someone wants us to do something we prefer not to do. At first we feel a little pressured but not enough to get angry. When they keep pushing us, we begin to get irritated. If they continue, we become “angry”.

Communicate Your Feelings

An effective way to avoid getting angry in many cases is simply to express your feeling before it has elevated to the point of anger. This helps keep the brain in balance and out of the more volatile mode where it has downshifted to a more primitive and physiological response.

Civility, an Emerging Area of Specialization in Emotional Intelligence

A wide range of organizations are beginning to address the increase of incivility that is becoming pervasive throughout American society. Hospital chains, State Bar Associations and local governments are some of the organizations taking the lead in providing basic training in “civility”.

What is civility?

Civility is behavior in public that demonstrates respect for others and that entails curtailing one’s own immediate self-interest, when appropriate. Civility is made up of three elements: Civility is the common language for communicating respect for others and their views (the importance is in the gestures of respect more than the outcome of the behavior); Civility toward strangers requires that we behave in certain ways toward people who may mean nothing to us, and whom we are unlikely ever to encounter again, in the interest of hearing their thoughts; and, Civility involves holding back in the pursuit of one’s own immediate self-interest – we desist from doing what would be most pleasing to us for the sake of harmonious civil discourse with others, even strangers.

Since no universally agreed training/curricula for “civility” currently exists, the range of interventions includes the following: ethics, spirituality, emotional intelligence, anger management and etiquette.

On April 29, 2008, Anderson & Anderson® presented a successful training in civility. This training included emotional intelligence, stress management, communication and anger management. This training was the first civility-based seminar approved for Attorneys in the State of Illinois. It was well received and highly rated by those in attendance.

Daniel Goleman, the preeminent expert on Emotional Intelligence, offers the following tips on civility: “Conduct yourself with integrity, courtesy, and respect toward fellow members of our community”; “Hold individuals accountable for their actions”; and “Promote an environment where individuals feel safe and supported.”

Emotional intelligence already contains all of the skill sets needed to increase civility in individuals, groups and organizations. Anderson & Anderson® has long addressed these same issues in our comprehensive organizational training in anger management and our Executive Coaching/Anger Management for Physicians.

Civility At Work

by Daniel Goleman, Author

“How do you handle someone who is being obnoxious?”

That was a question put to me recently when I talked to a group having their annual Civility Awareness day at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center at Worcester.

We explored how best to encourage civility – which goes beyond mere politeness. The UMass credo on civility offers these tips:

• “Conduct yourself with integrity, courtesy, and respect toward fellow members of our community.”

• “Hold individuals accountable for their actions.”

• “Promote an environment where individuals feel safe and supported.”

These rules for civility in a workplace are heartening; I’m pleased that an organization has focused on how to upgrade the quality of interactions among everyone who works there, as well as with patients.

People at work in any organization face a panoply of forces that easily overpower the urge to be civil: stress, multi-tasking, too much to do with too little time, or too little support. Stress and distractedness – not meanspiritness – are the most common enemies of civility at work.

Consider what you might call “deep civility”: being fully present and attuned to the other person, empathizing, and preparedness to do what you can for them. This attitude resonates with Martin Buber’s concept of the “I-You” connection, where two people are in rapport. These are the human moments when we feel fully engaged and contacted; these are the moments of personal connection we value the most. And, in the workplace, this is what allows for the chemistry where people can work together at their best, or where customers and clients feel most pleased.

What then, does this take? In Social Intelligence I described the varieties of empathy – cognitive, emotional, and empathic concern. These are prerequisites for the full engagement that allows deep civility. But beyond that, each of us can take responsibility for conducting ourselves so the people we contact feel attuned to. Given the countless distractions we face, this begins with paying full attention. The ingredients of a moment of human connection start with our putting down what we’re doing, stopping our wandering thoughts, and simply paying full attention to the other person.

Now, back to that question about the obnoxious person. Because the social brain makes emotions contagious, the danger comes when we take in the negativity, and fail to metabolize it – when the anger, for instance, stays with us, instead of our recovering from it. In the helping professions, the recipe for burnout begins with someone who constantly deals with others who are fearful, angry, or resentful, and who walks away from those encounters feeling that distress – and can’t recover from it. Over time this builds up to an emotional exhaustion – burnout is the end state.

So particularly among those in the caring professions, the ability to recover from such stress is crucial. Luckily for the people at UMass, they are home to the program in Mindfulness-based stress reduction. This training – which has spread to hundreds of hospitals and clinics – gives people the inner ability to stay calm and attuned, without closing down to other people.

In the emotional intelligence model, self-awareness and managing our emotions well are the keys to self-mastery. Once we stabilize in a positive state, we can become senders of that positivity to others. And that suggests one strategy for dealing with an obnoxious encounter – stay calm and clear, be firm but friendly. Because every interaction is a system, this can have a positive impact on the other person. And even if they do not change how they are acting, we can leave their negativity behind as we go on to the next encounter.

In short, the ability to pass on to others our own positive states suggests a deeper sense of “civility.”

George Anderson Blazes New Trails in Civility Training

The Property Loss and Research Bureau/PLRB became the first organization to sponsor and receive the new required Civility Training for Illinois based attorneys. This four hour training was provided to 30 Attorneys at the corporate office of PLRB in Downers Grove, IL. on April 29, 2008.

Mr. Anderson did a remarkable job of keeping those in attendance focused on the key concepts of emotional intelligence in promoting civility in all interpersonal interactions, both professional and personal. Each participant had an opportunity to objectively examine his or her strengths, current skills and deficits in interpersonal assertion, self-esteem, time management, stress management, anger management and decision making. All of the above are essential skills to assist in self-management and civility in interpersonal interactions.

The spirit of mutual trust and norms of reciprocity enables citizens and groups to cooperate spontaneously to achieve shared outcomes. Hence, training in civility benefits the entire community.

Emotional intelligence/Civility Training is currently being planned for finance managers in St. Louis, MO.

Improving Communication with Others

Lack of communication is the root of many troubles, such as hurt feelings, misunderstandings, missed deadlines, and unsuccessful connections. Healthy communication in its broadest form is important in developing positive healthy relationships between family members and others. Everyone should utilize techniques useful for gaining good communication skills.

Basic skills are very important and many people do not use them well. Poor communication skills result in unnecessary problems and misunderstandings in relationships.

Good communication requires two sets of skills:

• Those required to understand the other person (accurate receiving).
• Those required to give out accurate messages (accurate sending).

Four key communication skills for improving interpersonal relationships are:

• The ability to listen without judging.
• Show understanding of what has been said.
• Acknowledge and accept another’s point of view.
• Don’t impose your personal beliefs on someone else.

Good communication skills take patience and time to acquire. We encourage participants to use all of their newly learned skills in developing positive and healthy relationships.

Motivation is the Key to Change

“Motivation” comes from the Latin word for “to move”. It is a goal-oriented behavior. In essence, we take action because it feels good to do so. It feels right to take a break when we are on overload, then it feels right to go back to work. The real challenge is to make it feel right to take action that does not have an immediate reward. For teenagers and young adults, it is natural to want to see immediate results from any action. Their brains are still developing the ability to reason from cause to effect. In order to feel motivated, we have to tap into the part of ourselves that has a longer view, which also feels right.

Take the Long View

All of us make countless decisions every hour. What should I eat for lunch? Which book should I read first? Should I do homework? Which person should I ask? In part, we make those decisions unconsciously based on our patterns and habits – the things we learned from our families. We also make decisions based on our personal priorities. So, if we want to redirect our decision to take the longer view, we need to both shape unconscious habits and examine priorities to make sure they match. Therefore, completing the assignments between sessions is far more likely to lead to permanent change than the time spent in sessions.

Creating the Correct Environment can Motivate Others

In addition to motivating ourselves, it is important to learn how to create an environment where others can become motivated. There are many ways to do so. The most obvious is “extrinsic” motivation. For example, “If you carry my books, I will give you part of my lunch,” is a simple example of extrinsic motivation. It is a bribe or an offer made in exchange for a service. Regardless of how it is viewed, both parties benefit in some way.

Anger Management Guru to Present “The Business of Managing Anger” At a Social Work Conference

George Anderson, B.C.D., L.C.S.W. is scheduled to participate in a panel discussion with a focus on Alternative Careers for M.S.W.s in Business and Government Sectors. This training is part of the Smith College School for Social Work, its 90th Anniversary alumni panel. The training will take place on July 19, 2008 on the campus of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

The Anderson & Anderson anger management curriculum is the industry standard in anger management worldwide. A documentary on this model will appear on the British Broadcasting Channel in this Fall.

Rasheed Ahmed
Office Manager
Anderson & Anderson
The Trusted Name in Anger Management
greynotions@aol.com
http://www.andersonservices.com

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